Archbishop Theophan (Bystrov) of Poltava: Brief Canonical Assessments on the Calendar Reform

Question: What are the old and new styles of the calendar?

Answer: The old style is the original, initial, ancient Christian one. It has been inherited from Apostolic times through the Sacred Tradition of the most ancient Church and was established as the basis of Christian chronology by the First Ecumenical Council (325 AD), as well as for determining the celebration of Holy Pascha along with all feasts and fasts dependent on it. The attempt of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, under Pope Gregory, to introduce a new, "scientific" style led only to the creation of a pseudo-scientific and anti-canonical style. For the question of chronology is scientifically irresolvable. Thus, the old style is a symbol of the unity of Christians throughout the world, while the new style is a symbol of rebellion, revolution, and the division of Christians.

Proofs: "Traditions are established for us either by writing or without writing; likewise, the transmitted dogmas have the same authority as what is written." (Book of Canons, Alphabetical Collection).

"We preserve without innovation all the ecclesiastical traditions established for us, whether by writing or without writing." (Dogmatic Definition of the 7th Ecumenical Council).

"I think that this also is Apostolic: that we hold to the unwritten traditions." (Basil the Great, Canons 91 and 92; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6).

Likewise, the sacred canons themselves decisively declare themselves to be "firm and unalterable" (6th Ecumenical Council, Canon 2), "indestructible and immovable" (7th Ecumenical Council, Canon 1), and "inviolably testify to their respectful observance, especially for pastors" (4th Ecumenical Council, Canon 1).

Disorders in the Church cannot be resolved by infringing upon these canons. The renowned Metropolitan Peter Mogila declared that not only a patriarch but even an Angel descending from heaven would not compel him to act contrary to the ecclesiastical canons. Such is the thinking and conduct of a hierarch who was one of the greatest adornments of the Orthodox Church.

"The Church, by virtue of the fundamental principles of its origin and the primary source of its essential norms, has no right to alter its decrees as long as it remains the Church. If the Church, in its fundamental essence, is not the work of human hands but an institution of the Supreme Will, then we are not granted the right to change the fundamental norms of its life and structure, as is clearly expressed in the 2nd canon of the 6th Ecumenical Council." (Journal of the Sessions of the Russian Pre-Council Assembly, 1906, Church Gazette, No. 21, 1906).

Question: How should one regard both styles according to the sacred canons?

Answer: The first must be preserved in every way, while the second must be firmly avoided.

Proofs: "If we undertake to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we will inevitably damage the Gospel in its fundamental matters." (Basil the Great, Canon 91).

"Novelties must not be introduced contrary to the Scriptures and ecclesiastical traditions." (Book of Canons, Alphabetical Collection).

"Let everything in the Church be as received from the Divine Scriptures and Apostolic Traditions." (Council of Gangra, Canon 21, and 1st Ecumenical Council, Canon 2).

Question: Does the introduction of the new style have significant or insignificant importance?

Answer: It is of great importance, especially in connection with the Paschalion, and constitutes extreme disorder and ecclesiastical schism, alienating one from communion and unity with the entire Church of Christ; depriving one of the grace of the Holy Spirit; shaking the dogma of the unity of the Church and, like Arius, tearing apart the seamless tunic of Christ, that is, universally dividing the Orthodox, depriving them of like-mindedness; severing the connection with the Church’s Sacred Tradition and falling under conciliar condemnation for despising Tradition, according to the aforementioned dogmatic definition of the 7th Ecumenical Council.

Proofs: "The ancients called heretics those who had fallen away and become alienated even in the very faith; schismatics—those who had divided in opinions on certain ecclesiastical matters. Although the beginning of apostasy occurred through schism, those who departed from the Church no longer had upon them the grace of the Holy Spirit, and, being cut off, having become mere laymen, they had no authority either to baptize or to ordain, nor could they impart to others the grace of the Holy Spirit, from which they themselves had fallen away." (Basil the Great, Canon 1).

Question: How should Orthodox Christians, according to the canons, regard the new-calendarist schismatics?

Answer: They should have no prayerful communion with them even before their ecclesiastical condemnation.

Proofs: "It is not proper to pray with a heretic or a schismatic." (Laodicean Council, Canon 39)

Interpretation in the Greek Kormchaia, p. 252: "This canon establishes that we should not pray either with heretics, who err in faith, or with schismatics, who are Orthodox in faith but have separated from the Catholic Church over certain traditions."

(Compare: Apostolic Canons 45 and 46; Laodicean Council Canons 6, 9, 32, and 37; and Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria, Canon 9).

Question: What punishment, according to the ecclesiastical canons, is prescribed for those who pray with the new-calendarist schismatics?

Answer: The same condemnation as them.

Proofs: "If anyone prays with one who is excommunicated from ecclesiastical communion, even in a house, let him also be excommunicated." (Apostolic Canon 10).

"For prayer with the excommunicated, one is subjected either to excommunication, deposition, or anathema—both those who pray and those with whom they pray." (Commentary on Canon 9 of the Council of Carthage in the Greek Kormchaia, p. 252).

Question: Does the epitimia imposed by new-calendarist pastors have any validity over Orthodox Christians who do not submit to them and separate from them in prayer?

Answer: It has no validity whatsoever.

Proofs: The second half of Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, which speaks about heretical pastors, is applicable also to the new-calendarist schismatics.

The commentary on Canon 29 (98) of the Council of Carthage, as found in Syntagma of Matthew Blastares in the Russian translation, under letter A, chapter 17, p. 56, states: "One may disregard the epitimia without danger."

The commentary on Apostolic Canon 31 in the Greek Kormchaia, p. 19, states: "Those who separate from a bishop before conciliar investigation, because he publicly preaches some blasphemy or heresy, not only do not fall under the epitimia prescribed in Apostolic Canon 31 and Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, but are also worthy of the honor befitting the Orthodox."

Question: Have the pastors of the Orthodox Church expressed any particular judgments on the calendar style based on the aforementioned ecclesiastical canons?

Answer: They have expressed them repeatedly—regarding the introduction of the new Roman calendar—both in private gatherings and in councils.

Proof of this is the following: First and foremost, the contemporary of the Roman calendar reform, Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II, immediately in 1582 condemned the new Roman reckoning with his Synod as being contrary to the Tradition of the Church. The following year (1583), with the participation of the Patriarchs Sylvester of Alexandria and Sophronius VI of Jerusalem, he convened a Church Council. This Council recognized the Gregorian calendar as inconsistent with the canons of the Ecumenical Church and with the decrees of the First Ecumenical Council regarding the method of calculating the date of Holy Pascha.

The labors of this Council resulted in the Conciliar Tome, which exposed the falsehood and unacceptability of the Roman calendar for the Orthodox Church, and the Canonical Conciliar Decree—the Sigillion, dated November 20, 1583. In this Sigillion, all three aforementioned Patriarchs, together with their Synods, call upon the Orthodox to steadfastly and unwaveringly adhere to the Orthodox Menaion and the Julian Paschalion, even to the shedding of their blood, threatening violators with anathema, excommunication from the Church of Christ, and separation from the assembly of the faithful.

This decision of the Council of Constantinople was communicated through an encyclical letter to all the Eastern Churches, to Metropolitan Dionysius of Moscow, to the Church of the Ionian Islands, to the renowned defender of Orthodoxy in Western Europe, Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky, to the Venetian Doge N. da Ponte, and to Pope Gregory XIII—the principal instigator of ecclesiastical turmoil and scandal.

At that time, Patriarch Sylvester of Alexandria (1566–1590), in an encyclical letter to the Orthodox Christians of Western Europe, stated: "Following our Fathers and Leaders, both Eastern and Western, we rightly prefer the ancient to the new, for it has been once determined by the Orthodox Church to accept no novelty whatsoever and not to depart from anything ancient."

Throughout the following three centuries— the 17th, 18th, and 19th— a number of Ecumenical Patriarchs resolutely spoke out against the Gregorian calendar and, in accordance with the conciliar decree of Patriarch Jeremias II, exhorted the Orthodox to avoid it.

Thus, the following Patriarchs: Cyril I, who occupied the Ecumenical Throne six times and suffered a martyr's death at the hands of the Jesuits in 1639; Parthenius I (1639–1644); Callinicus II (1688–1693, 1694–1702); Paisius II (1726–1733); Cyril V (1748–1757); Agathangelus (1826–1830); Gregory VI (1835–1840, 1867–1871); and Anthimus VI (1845–1848, 1855)— all condemned the Roman reckoning as hostile to Orthodox Christianity in the East, viewing this innovation in the spirit of Patriarch Jeremiah II.

Thus, for example, Patriarch Callinicus II, together with Patriarch Athanasius of Antioch (1686–1728), explained to the Antiochian flock that celebrating Pascha at the same time as the Latins is a renunciation of the ordinance of the Orthodox Church concerning fasts and an adoption of the statutes of the Roman Church— a betrayal of Orthodoxy and an abandonment of the Patristic traditions, destructive for the children of the Orthodox Church. Therefore, every true Christian must be steadfast in the ordinances of the Orthodox Church and is obligated to celebrate Pascha, along with the associated feast days and ecclesiastical seasons, in accordance with the practice of the Orthodox East, and not that of the heterodox West, which is foreign to us in faith.

Similarly, and with even greater severity, was the encyclical letter of Patriarch Cyril V in 1756, in which it is stated that whoever follows the Apostle Paul, who declared in his Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 1, verse 8: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach to you any gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema,"—such a one—"whether priest or layman, let him be cut off from God, accursed, and after death let him not decompose but remain in eternal torment... Let such inherit the leprosy of Gehazi and the strangulation of Judas; let him be upon the earth as Cain, groaning and trembling, and may the wrath of God be upon his head, and his portion be with the traitor Judas and the God-fighting Jews... May the Angel of God pursue them with a sword all the days of their lives, and may they be subject to all the curses of the Patriarchs and Councils, under eternal excommunication and in the torments of the everlasting fire. Amen. So let it be!"

In 1827, Patriarch Agathangelus rejected the proposal of Russian scholars for a reform of the ecclesiastical calendar.

In 1848, Patriarch Anthimus VI, together with the other Eastern Patriarchs—Hierotheos of Alexandria, Methodius of Antioch, and Cyril of Jerusalem—testified in an encyclical letter of the One Catholic Church, addressed to all Orthodox Christians:

"With us, neither the Patriarchs nor the Councils have ever been able to introduce anything new, because the guardian of piety among us is the very body of the Church itself, that is, the people themselves, who always desire to preserve their faith unchanged and in agreement with the faith of their fathers... Let us hold fast to the confession which we have received from such men, the Holy Fathers, and let us turn away from every innovation as a suggestion of the devil... If anyone should dare to do so—whether by deed, by counsel, or even by thought—such a one has already renounced the Christian faith and has willingly subjected himself to eternal anathema for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as if He had not spoken perfectly in the Holy Scriptures and in the Ecumenical Councils."

Thus, all innovators—whether heretics or schismatics—have voluntarily "clothed themselves with a curse as with a garment" (Ps. 108:18), whether they be Popes, Patriarchs, clergy, or laity, "even if an Angel from heaven—ANATHEMA to him!"

Accordingly, throughout the past three centuries, since the Roman calendar reform, many heads of Churches, including Patriarchs (in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, the Archbishops of Cyprus, etc.), have rejected the calendar reform. By means of letters and encyclicals, they have safeguarded their flocks, explaining to them the true nature of the Gregorian calendar and highlighting its connection with a series of papal innovations.

In 1902–1904, representatives of the Orthodox Autocephalous Churches—Constantinople, Jerusalem, Greece, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro—officially expressed their position on the issue of church calendar reform. The result of their evaluation was a rejection of the calendar reform, both for reasons of faith and out of concern for ecclesiastical turmoil, which could undermine the authority of the Church.

The All-Russian Church Council of 1917–1918 examined the question of adapting the new calendar to church life and the possibility of establishing a new, potentially improved Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar. After thorough consideration and investigation of this matter from ecclesiastical-canonical, scientific-astronomical, and technical perspectives, the Council categorically substantiated the harmfulness of any rapprochement with the Gregorian style, giving high preference to the Julian calendar. As a result, the Council decided to retain the old style of ecclesiastical reckoning. In 1923, the Russian Orthodox Church once again confirmed the decision of its 1917–1918 Council and refused to adopt the Gregorian calendar into its liturgical practice, despite the coercive pressure exerted by the godless Bolshevik regime that had taken it captive. This decision was prompted not only by Patriarch Tikhon and his Holy Synod but also by the will of the entire Orthodox people of Russia, who categorically rejected the new style. This very act expressed the action of the entire Church in the fullness of its composition, as testified by the hierarchs of the East in the aforementioned encyclical of 1848.

Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church, the most numerous of all Orthodox Churches, comprising nearly 90 percent of all Orthodox Christians worldwide, firmly rejected the new style.

And finally, the earthly inheritance of the Queen of Heaven, the Holy Mountain of Athos, as a steadfast stronghold and true beacon of Orthodoxy, despite repeated attempts by both ecclesiastical and civil authorities to persuade it to adopt the Gregorian calendar, through its most esteemed representatives, rejected this anti-ecclesiastical innovation and unwaveringly preserves the order of celebrating Holy Pascha and the entire Orthodox Menaion-calendar as established by the God-bearing Fathers.

(- Церковный вестник [Church Bulletin], 1926.)

 

Source: Духовник царской семьи. Архиепископ Феофан Полтавский, Новый Затворник [Spiritual Father of the Royal Family. Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, the New Recluse], by Richard Betts and Vyacheslav Marchenko, Moscow, Danilov Monastery, 2010, Appendix II.